ly very
slightly armoured. They were intended to carry material, sometimes
munitions, and even food. Three of these pseudo-tanks were carrying up
material to rebuild a bridge which had been destroyed. They
discovered, when they neared the place, that the enemy were holding it
in some strength, and our infantry could not advance. Moreover
directly the Tanks appeared, they began to draw fire--which they were
not meant to face--and the situation was threatening. But, with great
pluck and resource, the Tanks decided just to go on, and trust to
their looks, which were like those of the fighting Tanks, to drive the
enemy from the position.... One Tank became a casualty; but the other
two went straight for the German lines; and the Germans, under the
impression that they were being attacked by fighting Tanks, either put
up their hands or fled."

Thus, in its last moments of resistance, the German Army, now but the
ghost of itself, was scattered by the ghost of a Tank! What was being
prepared for it, had the struggle gone on, is told in a memorandum on
Tanks organisation which has come my way, and makes one alternately
shudder at the war that might have been, and rejoice in the peace that
is. In the last weeks of the war, Tank organisation was going rapidly
forward. A new Tank Board, consisting of Naval, Military, and
Industrial members, was concentrating all its stored knowledge on "the
application of naval tactics to land warfare," in other words, on the
development of Tanks, and had the war continued, the complete
destruction of the German Armies would have been brought about in 1919
by "a Tank programme of some _six thousand machines_." When one
considers that for the whole of the three last victorious months in
which Tanks played such an astonishing part, the British Armies never
possessed more than four hundred of them, who travelled like a circus
from army to army, the significance of this figure will be understood.
Nor could Germany, by any possibility, have produced either the labour
or the material necessary, whereby to meet Tank with Tank. The game
was played out and the stakes lost.

* * * * *

But of fresh headings in this last tremendous chapter of _England's
Effort_, there might be no end. I can only glance at one or two of
them.

The Air Force? Ah, that, indeed, is another story--and so great a one,
that all I can attempt here is to put together[12] a few facts and
figures, i